For me, the finest
Pollini recording in 2008 wasn’t his
Beethoven op.2 or his
Chopin recital, nor even the re-issue
of the excellent
Piano Concerto set with Claudio Abbado,
but this disc of Mozart concertos. Only last year did
Pollini return to these works after not releasing an official
recording of Mozart since 1976 (see Colin Clarke’s
review).
This is the second of the recent (live) Mozart recordings which
are with Pollini conducting
the Vienna Philharmonic. Understated, sunny, and genial – that’s
why this - as well as the preceding - recording are such a
delight. In the early A-major concerto K.414, among the first
that Mozart wrote to introduce himself in Vienna, is a gentle
delight – sophisticated in its simplicity and receiving precisely
that kind of a treatment. No-nonsense, arguably understated,
in pianistic perfection – in the c-minor concerto this reminds
me of
Keith Jarrett’s Mozart playing, but with ‘warmer’ results
not the least thanks to the accompaniment from the Philharmonic’s
radiant strings and sonorous, perfect winds.
Pollini plays Mozart’s candezas for K414 (and the second available
cadenza for the second movement). For K491 no cadenza by Mozart
has survived, which is why
Saint-
Saëns wrote one, as did Fauré, J.N.Hummel,
Humperdinck, Carl Reinecke, J.B.Cramer, Reynaldo Hahn, Brahms,
Smetana, and Busoni. Many pianists use their own – like
Vladimir Ashkenazy,
Alfred Brendel,
Rudolf Buchbinder,
Géza Anda and
Paul Badura-Skoda. George Szell wrote one,
too, which
Clifford Curzon uses in this concerto. Pollini
uses Sicilian contemporary composer Salvatore Sciarrino’s – which
are, unlike the Kalevi Aho cadenzas for the flute concertos, not
in any way modern but Mozartean, predictable, harmless, lovely,
even unnoticeable and not particularly spontaneous. That’s not
a bad thing at all, because this disc isn’t going to be purchased
for “Sciarrino cadenzas” but for Mozart – and the cadenzas are
never in Mozart’s way. There are other lovely recordings of this,
of course (Goode, Curzon), but when a record like this is in the
CD player, comparison becomes pointless; enjoyment paramount.
Jens F. Laurson
Vienna Philharmonic/Maurizio Pollini
(piano). 
